Yet another trademark owner has gone to war over Google's keyword advertising. But this time it's a name everyone knows: American Airlines.
Yesterday, the world's largest airline slapped a federal suit on the world's largest search engine, claiming that Google's cash-cow of an ad system infringes on American's rather extensive …

God forbid anyone bids on "american airline" or "aa". People might get confused.

And while you're at it, Google, make sure there are no organic listings whenever someone searches for a trademarked name. It doesn't matter that you put the "real" American Airlines site at the top, the others must go ... worldwide!!

Remember the Playboy domain argument? Hugh Hefner didn't register playboy.com quickly enough, and some other guy got it. So Playboy Inc. sued them ... and lost ... because although Playboy was a registered trademark WITHIN THE CONTEXT of Playboy Inc.'s trademark applications, the word "playboy" is generic ... just like the adjective/noun combo "american" "airline".

Then again, the battle for estee-lauder.com came out differently, because "Estee Lauder" is a personal name, in addition to being a corporate identity. The original owner of estee-lauder.com was a distributor for those products, maybe like the distributors of American Airlines' ticket are.

American Airlines should pay someone to name their kid "American Airlines" and then acquire the rights to that kid. That should fix it.

Title

But Shirley

If you call your company American (as in the country) Airlines (as in the industry) you're going to keep getting this problem.

It'll be very hard to run an airline in America and not use those particular words.

Only an American would think they have a case, anyone with an ounce (I use imperial so as not to confuse the poor dears) of common sense would see it for what it is. Free publicity and a whole lot of stupidity!

Feign ignorance all you want, I know you are not faking ;)

While it may be a bit much to say AA is oh so well know, it is well known enough to pull an adword fakeout on. Google seems to be behaving badly by recommending someone piggy back off the fame of others, when they may be pulling the equivalent of a bait and switch with a competitors product. I know a company that had issues with Google and advertisements placed by competitors pretending to be said company. It happens, and Google seems unwilling at times to pull the advertisements.

Title

No company should be allowed to copyright any word in the dictionary, unless they invented it, if they invented it, then its theirs, if they did not invent, but have copyrighted it, what grounds have they for any worth it has or has earned, maybe they should pay commission to the person who did invent it.....Not that I can see many ancient britons coming forward to file suit...

So, with that in mind I shall invent a word, err, hang it its harder than you think this word inventing business.....

I'll get back to you on this...

Maybe I should just buy the rights to old childrens stories, then go after people who remake them, scream breach of copyright and screw them for every penny, easier money earner....Oh damn thats been done already.....

"Geico is a pretty well know brand"

AA?

I have a suggestion for people concerned about having their @$$es sued by American Airlines: Anytime you need to use "AA" just put "PAHOEHOE", which along with aa is a form of Hawaiian pillow lava............

windows

It's been established in the u.s. courts that MS owns the Windows trademark.

I guess Google better remove all those search results that have anything to do with a product that fits in a hole in my wall and allows me to look out the hole and prevents the wind and rain from coming in through the hole.

AA versus AA not gonna happen

"American Airlines" daren't sue "Alcoholics Anonymous" over the acronym AA --- to do so would be to assert that consumers are likely to confuse a collection of airplane pilots with a collection of recovering drunks, and the airlines are trying to discourage that linkage, not highlight it.

RE: Airline Names?

Just another...

You lot (well, a lot of you lot) seem confused about what a trademark is...

A trademark allows you the exclusive use of a mark in a particular type of business. So there's no confusion between the trademark AA referring to an organization formerly intended for British motorists but now, well, not and the trademark AA referring to an airline.

Your best clue may well lie with Apple and, umm, Apple. One makes records, the other wishes it did.

And for those who think this is about searches like "I want to fly only on American airlines", think again. This is about people SELLING "space" on that search...

RI "AA"

They could be up the "creek"

People have already pointed out the obvious, such as American Airlines is not really that famous. I certainly hadn't heard of it. Also the difference between "American Airlines" and "American airlines" although completely different concepts, is not normally differentiated by a search engine.

What has not been mentioned yet, is that "AA" is a vovel ligature similar to "AE" and "OE". This is much used in old English, and still in words like encyclopaedia (encyclopædia) or names like Aaron.

It is also very much current in scandinavian languages, although they more often use more modern symbols for those letters eg. Æ, Ø, and Å . The last three letters of the Danish alphabet are "ae", "oe". "aa", and the letter "aa" is also the name for creek. The double letters and the vovel ligatures are completely interchangable. Try typing "AA" or "Å" into www.google.dk and see what you get. Both symbols bring up American Airlines, probably because they paid for it, but there sure is a lot of other stuff!

I must say though, that if I typed "creek" into www.google.com and got "American Airlines" on the first results page, I'd really start to wonder.

stupid

Sabre-rattling...

American Airlines is no stranger to careful use of branding tricks, of course. It was the developer of the first computerized airline reservation system, Sabre (more familair to web users these days as Travelocity).

As Sabre became widely used by travel agents, other airlines complained that it always offered Americal Airlines flights as the first choice, even when they were not the cheapest or most direct options. The courts upheld this, and ordered AA/Sabre to present the results in a more neutral form.

Yet another AAacronym

Fair case

Although I also find it hard to pity American Airlines for this. I think the people saying it is pointless need to take a step back and consider that this will be used to set precedant.

Suppose you run a small company called "Super Tax Calc" or some such, you put years of work in and make a program that's far better than the competition, and as your a small online software company get all your business through search engines (even people who hear word of mouth will google to find your site).

Some huge competitor decides to take your market by setting up a site comparing his product to yours (using marketing speak) to show how superior their (actually inferior) product is.

They then buy an add campaign on all the major search engines, so the moment someone goes searching for your product they find theirs at the top of the page.

This kind of thing WILL happen, and it will generally be the smaller companies that suffer most as they have the lower ad budgets.

(Not a) Fair Case

"Some huge competitor decides to take your market by setting up a site comparing his product to yours (using marketing speak) to show how superior their (actually inferior) product is. They then buy an add campaign on all the major search engines, so the moment someone goes searching for your product they find theirs at the top of the page."

And how many companies do *you* know that have an official website that disses their product in favour of a competitor?

A search engine cannot reasonably be expected to know the context in which the end-user's input was intended. (I quite often type in a product name in order to find hostile reviews and competing products. It's called market research and it is something that the web is particularly good for.) On the other hand, the end-user can reasonably be expected to make exactly this discrimination as long as the linked-to websites are not themselves engaged in some kind of passing off offence.

A victory for AA would infringe on my right to free hearing. (It's the obvious counterpart to free speech, but as far as I know enjoys little or no constitutional protection anywhere in the world.)

Ignore the ads?

References

The great interest in Google is that it is smart enough to deduce what are you searching for. If you search for pepsi, it will asume you are searching for pepsi then on sodas.. and this lawsuit pretends to cancel that.

I think the lot of you are googlehuggers

Seriously, if it wasn't Google, you wouldn't think this is acceptable. If this was Microsoft, everyone would be complaining about Billyboy making money on the backs of the oppressed.

Remember people, this isn't about a competitor putting up a site called American Airlines Sucks and having it indexed and displayed in the regular search results. It's about buying Adwords and having it displayed in the "sponsored links" list.

No one is saying Alcoholics Anonymous bought adwords so that AA searches displayed links to their site and not American Airlines. American Airlines is claiming people like British/Virgin/Delta bought the term American Airlines and displayed advertisements for their own airlines. It'd be the same if Branson took out a front page advert in a local paper that said Singapore Air (Full add on page 3) and then on page 3 you have a full page ad for Virgin.

Technically Google is not at fault, but they encourage companies to purchase these misleading adverts. If I'm American Airlines, what incentive do I have to buy an adword for my trademarked names with Google? When people search for American Airlines or AA my webpage already shows up within the first three hits. The only time I would want to buy an Adword is IF SOMEONE ELSE WHO WASN'T ME BID ON IT FIRST. All of this nonsense of a business model relies on Delta buying the Adword, American Airlines saying "oh boy we need to pay more for this adword" and Google inflating their revenue.

or why dont Google just.....

Is Google suggesting the Adword?

If Google is suggesting the Adword, then there is something suspicious. If there are just a list of Adwords that you scroll through and pick then no-problem. If Google understands the Adword is contextually linked to AA then they have a problem.